The evolution of Chinese characters has gone through stages such as oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, seal script, official script, regular script, cursive script and running script. Regular script is now commonly used for writing and application.
According to the unearthed cultural relics so far, oracle bone inscriptions are the earliest writing, originating from the Xia or before the Xia Dynasty, and developed into inscriptions engraved on bronze vessels during the Bronze Age. It evolved into the large seal script during the Zhou Dynasty, and was later simplified into the small seal script during the Warring States Period. During the Qin Shihuang period, folk official script became a new script, and then it was standardized into regular script, and finally simplified into the commonly used Chinese characters.
Chinese characters have undergone changes for more than 6,000 years, and their evolution process is:
Oracle bone script → Bronze script → Xiaozhuan → Official script → Regular script → Running script
(Shang) ( Zhou) (Qin) (Han) (Wei and Jin) cursive script
The evolution of Chinese characters can be briefly summarized into five stages: sound, shape, image, number, and reason.
1. "Sound" is an essential component of any language. In the distant and long ancient times, human beings gradually differentiated into their own characteristics from the instinctive "crying, laughter..." or imitating nature's "birdsong, insect, beast roar, wind, thunder, rain..." A "sound" that has a certain meaning and represents a certain thing. This is the evolution of speech.
2. "Shape" is the second important component of language, but it is not necessary. In ancient times, human beings mainly faced the problems of survival and racial continuation. In the interaction with nature and beasts such as venomous snakes, etc. During the struggle, it is sometimes necessary to use "shape" or "painting" to represent things. For example: on the cave wall, draw images such as "sun, moon, people, mountains, trees, animals,..."
3. "Xiang" is the main method of creating Chinese characters and explaining things in "Yi". "Sun, moon" and other hieroglyphs are the basic components of character creation, which can be combined to produce various forms. "Images" can be used to create more characters. Basic components and characters can also be combined at a higher level to produce many characters that represent various things and various ideas.
4. The concept of "number" was gradually formed during the long-term evolution of human beings. The first concepts that humans mastered may be "nothing" and "being". "Being" further differentiated into concepts of numbers such as "one, two, three, many". "Number" "Evolved in the direction of Yi Fu, gradually separated from the text, formed the Bagua, and formed the "Yi Jing" ("Lianshan", "Guizang", "Zhouyi") in the Xia, Shang and Zhou periods in history.
5. "Li" is an expansion of "Xiang and Shu". The evolution of the extension of Chinese characters is mainly expanded through "Li", that is, things that are similar to "Xiang" are also connected to "Li". For example: " The original meaning of "Ming" is bright, which extends to "the eyes can see clearly, the heart understands, and things become obvious..." etc.